


Sisters of Mercy

by heonhoneydew



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, bb sandor, huuuuurt, that unknown clegane sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6283984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heonhoneydew/pseuds/heonhoneydew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In spite of her clumsy ways, Sandor preferred her to any of the dour, robed shits who prayed to the Mother (or the Stranger).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sisters of Mercy

“Lie still, if you know what’s good for you. Now.” Her words were brusque-

“Seven hells, Sandor--”

-and occasionally her mouth would crack open with obscenities that should have been beneath a young lady of her standing.

“Please--”

But they were never unkind. How could he ever think her unkind? She had stayed with him as the endless stream of Maesters trickled in and out of his bedroom for the past several weeks, watching as they changed his bandages, trimmed away bits of mortified tissue, dabbed away puss, and eventually dropped their hands in resignation, only to be replaced by another grim-faced man in chains with a plan and a purse to fill. She sat in the corner of his room, arms crossed, and watched them all eventually, inevitably leave again for the Citadel; watched as they dragged their feet out into the hallway and told their father that there was nothing left to be done but to tend to him as best as they could and pray to the Seven for some sense of closure. 

And she would sit in the corner, and watch him as he listened to their last desperate whispers-- whispered that there were quick and painless ways to end the little boy’s suffering, suggestions that their father at least had the grace to return with a roar and prompt kick to the ass. Whispers that Lord Clegane could always defer to a Maester So-and-so, who had tended to a some little Highgarden lordling’s burns from a house fire, and though his eyeballs had melted and hissed and popped in their sockets, he was now able to grope his way around with respectable proficiency, and wouldn’t that be of some comfort?

And she saw Sandor shiver under his furs, and she knew it was not from a fever.

And when they were gone and their father had closed Sandor’s bedroom door, she would stand up and cross the floor to his bed. To stroke his hair. To cry. To be within an arm’s reach without crinkling her nose at the stench and sight of him.

And she copied the Maesters’ ways in her own idiom, in the fashion of a young lady who had only ever tended to her dolls and the feeble runts that the kennelmaster had set aside for drowning. But in spite of her clumsy ways, Sandor preferred her to any of the dour, robed shits who prayed to the Mother (or the Stranger) and muttered under their breath about the idiot boy who managed to set his bed on fire. She never said a word about the night of the incident -- but the way she reached for his little hand and trembled when Gregor’s shadow crossed the hallway was all he needed to know.

And she was still a Clegane, baring her square teeth at him when he cried and knocked bottles of ointment out of her hands, calling him a coward when he would sooner cry than let her wipe the sweat off the ruined side of his face, smacking at his hands when they reached up to poke at his jaw. Running her fingers through his hair to coax him to sleep. Telling him all manner of stories and jests and songs. And when he told her that he had no heart for the songs (or her voice, he’d feebly tease), she hummed tunelessly until he fell asleep.

“Maester Lyros instructed you to keep off of your sores--”

She had taken his small hand in one of her large, square ones and forced it down onto the mattress, to his side.

“It hurts,” he protested half-heartedly. “It hurts-”

“So it does. And if I see you touching that face of yours one more time, I will tie you down to the fucking bedpost.”

And though she was short with him, and though mixture of pain and milk of poppy was so intense that he could hardly distinguish between the two, he laughed for the first time in weeks. And it caused the little fissures in his little face to crack and tear for what felt like the hundredth time that day. And for the hundredth time that day, she kissed him on the forehead and left the room to fetch more clean cloth. And for the hundredth time that day, he felt his face awash in his blood and what he might have dreamed were her tears.

Maybe that was the day she left his room and never came back. Might be.


End file.
